The Business

The tablet revolution

Updated
March 13, 2013 00:32:34

Five million and counting, Australian's love affair with tablets just keeps growing.And mini versions have confounded the critics, pushing down the price while still offering the same or better features.While tablets are eating into laptop sales, in a few years time they too could be under threat from the next big thing.

TICKY FULLERTON, PRESENTER: Five million and counting - Australia's love affair with tablets just keeps growing, and mini versions have confounded the critics pushing down the price, while still offering the same or better features.

While tablets are eating into laptop sales, in a few years' time they too could be under threat from the next big thing.

Neal Woolrich reports.

NEAL WOOLRICH, REPORTER: This could well be the future of tablet computing, a program that creates 3D images through a motion-tracking glove. While the so-called "Tether" is the technology of tomorrow, there are plenty of tablet programs around today that are drawing new users in by the millions.

FOAD FADAGHI, RESEARCH DIRECTOR, TELSYTE: We're seeing an unabated appetite for media tablets in the Australian market. I think they captured the imagination of the public about three years ago when the iPad came about and we've just seen a gradual adoption increasing every year.

NEAL WOOLRICH: A new report by the technology analysis firm Telsyte showed that 2.4 million tablets were sold in Australia each year. It estimates there are 5 million tablet users in Australia now and that number is expected to grow by 50 per cent this year alone.

In large part the growth is being driven by the emergence of smaller versions like the iPad Mini. While the launch of the iPad Mini in November was greeted with some scepticism, Telsyte is now predicting that sales of smaller tablets will overtake those of regular-sized tablets by 2014.

FOAD FADAGHI: These devices are cheaper, they're also lighter and easier to use with one hand and also just the convenience factor of having something a little bit more portable than the standard 10-inch device.

ANTHEA ROBERTS, TELSTRA: For us it's about customers connecting to the mobile network, which is something that we see as hugely important for us in the future. We already see data consumption almost doubling every year on our network and tablets are a high data consumption kind of device.

NEAL WOOLRICH: The Telsyte reports says half of all tablet users purchased a physical product or service on their tablet in 2012, helping fuel the rise of online commerce.

Telstra's Anthea Roberts says consumers have been the biggest data users on tablets so far, but businesses are catching up.

ANTHEA ROBERTS: We're seeing businesses now use applications for things like scheduling jobs, monitoring where workforces are, accessing instructions manuals. We've seen the likes of Qantas where we have deployed iPads into their market.

FOAD FADAGHI: There's companies all the way from media publishers to people selling things online, all the way to people selling accessories, the actual devices, carriers selling mobile services attached to the tablet.

NEAL WOOLRICH: But the next revolution in mobile computing could well be Google Glass. In geek speak, it's a set of augmented reality glasses. Users will be able to wear them for hands-free computing and internet use.

Telsyte research director Foad Fadaghi says there are now 20 active players in the tablet market and competition has seen prices halve in the last few years.

FOAD FADAGHI: And we see, I guess, tablets increasingly cannibalising sales for things like computers and notebooks. So, the market we think is going to be quite vibrant for at least another three or four years until it becomes a very mainstream technology.

NEAL WOOLRICH: So while the days of the tablet are far from numbered, if Google can make its glass technology work at a price that has mass appeal, the future for consumers may look very different.

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